Timeline · Manhattan · 2020–21
First Wave
Activation, then silence
Directive 51 woke the Manhattan sleepers. Most of them never reported back.
Around December 20, President Waller activated the First Wave of Strategic Homeland Division agents already living in New York. Their brief was to stabilize the city, support JTF, and recover what CERA needed. They were outnumbered, under-supplied, and dropped into a Dark Zone the Joint Task Force was already abandoning.
The official record says the First Wave was 'lost.' The unofficial record is uglier. Some died covering evacuations JTF would not reinforce. Some went rogue rather than keep dying for a chain of command that had left the island. Some were hunted later by the same government that had activated them.
Aaron Keener is the First Wave's most famous apostate, but he is not the only one. The missing First Wave is the original sin of the Division story: a unit that was asked to save a city, then treated as expendable when the city did not save.
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Related files
Aaron Keener
Top SecretThe Division's first true apostate — charismatic, brilliant, and unfinished.
Second Wave
RestrictedA second activation broke the siege on the Post Office and began the fight to retake Manhattan.
Directive 51
SecretA presidential continuity order that created the legal spine for the Strategic Homeland Division.
Waves
SecretFirst Wave was spent. Second Wave was the redo with fewer illusions.